Dr. John MantschDr. John Mantsch calls drug addiction one of the biggest medical challenges facing society today.
"We are in the midst of an addiction epidemic but we are poorly equipped to respond," the chair and professor of biomedical sciences says. "Effective approaches for the management of addiction are lacking in part due to our limited understanding of the underlying neurobiology."
Mantsch would know. The prolific researcher and winner of a 2017 Way Klingler Fellowship Award, studies neuropsychiatric disease with a focus on the neurobiological underpinnings of addiction and stress-related disorders. A co-founder of Promentis Pharmaceuticals, a pharmaceutical company that originated in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, Mantsch has devoted his career to solving the countless complex puzzles that exist in the human brain.
Aware that his pursuits are daunting, he remains optimistic.
"With recent advances in biotechnology, we are closer than ever to having the tools needed to unlock the mysteries of the human brain," Mantsch emphasizes.
Mantsch says he will use this fellowship to acquire and develop cutting-edge technology to isolate and manipulate discrete cell populations and pathways in the brain, and to apply this technology to the study of drug addiction.
"I am truly grateful for the support provided by the Way Klingler family through this award," he says. "I am confident that the funds will allow me and my research team to make meaningful progress in understanding and developing new treatments for addiction."
Albert RiveroDr. Albert Rivero put his research on hold over the past few years to serve twice as chair of the Department of English. Now, a 2017 Way Klingler Fellowship Award will allow him to take his projects off the shelf and advance them to completion.
A Professor of English, Rivero explores the complex connections between literary works produced in Britain during the so-called "long 18th century," from the Restoration to the Romantics, and their historical contexts. He has also focused on textual scholarship, editing the new Norton Critical Editions of Gulliver's Travels and Moll Flanders as well as Samuel Richardson's Pamela novels for The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Samuel Richardson.
Rivero will use the fellowship opportunity to shift focus to one of England's foremost 18th century novelists, Jane Austen. He says the project — with its emphasis on religion as the basis of human equality and thus social justice — will further the research mission of ÃÛÌÒÓ°Ïñ and the Helen Way Klingler College of Arts and Sciences.
"Austen lived at a time when women were not considered full citizens; marriage, property and voting laws ensured that they remained so," Rivero points out. "She wrote her novels to remedy that situation. Those novels were informed by her deep Christian faith, a fact not universally acknowledged in current Austen criticism."
